Nick

16

To be on the receiving end of Annabelle Martin’s full attention, to have her big brown eyes focused on me, well, it made my head fuzzy and I had to glance away to try to reboot my brain, which had just stalled out like it had a dead battery.

I hadn’t been alone with an attractive woman in so long, I barely remembered how to behave. Of course, this was all new territory for me as a man who used a wheelchair as his safe space. I’d never had cause to doubt myself with the opposite sex before, not like I did now. I glanced back at her face to see what she made of all this.

In the yellow porch light, I could just see the pulse point at the base of her throat. Was it ticking as fast as mine, or was that just wishful thinking? I sat beside her in a wheelchair. How could she see me as anything other than a broken man? She couldn’t, and it was good for me to remember that.

“I need you to be me,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment and then asked, “Be you? As in, you as a woman? Like you had a gender reassignment?”

A laugh punched out of me. “Uh, no, more like my representative, the face of Daire Industries.”

“I’m a graphic designer,” she said. “I draw things, make them pretty or interesting. I have zero skills in the business world, obviously.”

“You don’t have to do anything other than go to a gala and schmooze with the press, local politicians, and businessmen, assuring them that I am one hundred percent invested in the housing development for which the gala is being held to solicit money from investors.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Why me?” she asked. “Surely you must know someone from your business days who would be better suited.”

“True,” I said. “You aren’t really qualified.”

She didn’t like that. I saw her shift in her seat, and her chin tipped up ever so slightly. Why was teasing her so much fun? Was it flirting? Was I flirting? My history with women had never included this sort of back-and-forth. It was always much more straightforward with me being rich and the women I dated wanting to be with a guy who could pay for the lifestyle to which they wanted to become accustomed. None of those relationships, if I could even call them that, had lasted more than three months, a fiscal quarter in businessman’s terms.

“Again, why me?” she asked.

“Because this is mutually beneficial in that you need a big client, and if you do this for me, I will be delivering you one,” I said.

“Delivering or coercing?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“I’d prefer to work with someone who actually wants to hire me,” she said.

“Once they see your work, they will,” I said. I gestured to her house. Visible through the window, hanging on the wall in the living room, was the portrait she had done of Sir—he really needed a better name—when he’d been lying in the lemon tree. I remembered the day she’d painted it. I’d watched from the window, noting the sunlight on her hair and her eyes narrowed in concentration. I wished I could join her and felt ridiculously jealous of the cat for having her to himself. The painting’s colors were vibrant, and the likeness of Sir was incredible. “You are a major talent.”

Even in the dim light, I saw her face turn pink. Embarrassment? Pleasure? I didn’t know. I just had the driving urge to make it happen again.

“Who exactly is ‘they’?” she asked. “You’re not a mobster, are you?”

“ ‘They’ is a woman,” I said. “Her name is Lexi Brewer.”

Annabelle didn’t say a word, but I could feel her gaze on my face while I studied the leaves of the nearest tree, watching them flutter in the faint nighttime breeze. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her that Lexi was my sister. It wasn’t as if it was a secret, but I was trying to maintain a boundary between myself and Lexi, and by not acknowledging our family tie, I felt as if this made the whole thing more of a business arrangement.

“A woman?” she asked. Her tone was speculative. “Huh. So this woman, is she an ex-wife?”

“Never been married,” I said.

“Really?” she asked with a note of disbelief. I turned to look at her, locking my gaze on hers, and asked, “Do I really seem the marrying type to you?”

“Is there a type?” she countered. “It’s been my experience that marriage just sort of happens.”

“Just sort of happens?” I repeated. I couldn’t keep the horror out of my voice. “It’s a legally binding relationship with endless ramifications, not the least of which is losing half of your net worth if it doesn’t work out.”

A sigh slipped out of her. It was the sound of someone who knew the opposing argument so well that they didn’t feel the need to hear it again.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me you’ve been married? You have an ex-husband?”

She propped her elbow on the chair arm and then rested her chin in her hand. She regarded me steadily when she held up her other hand and wiggled two fingers. “I have two.”

“What?” I was appalled. Not that she was divorced so much as that she’d ever thought marrying was a good idea to begin with. But how exactly did she have two exes when a cursory glance at her rental papers had informed me that she wasn’t even thirty yet?

“Shocking, isn’t it?” She grinned and then she laughed. “I told you I’m impulsive.”

“You also said you were reckless,” I reminded her. “I feel like two marriages at your age falls more into the reckless category.”

“I went through a very hard time after my mother died.” She fingered the tattoo on her wrist. Her eyes seemed bottomless with sadness. It made my chest ache, and I wanted to hug her. I was not a hugger. I resisted, but it was harder than it should have been.

She was very young when her mother died. She must have felt so very alone. I knew what that sort of loneliness felt like. I supposed the two marriages made sense in light of her grief. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded in acknowledgment. “The grief was so immense, like a great big black hole. I latched on to whatever, or more accurately whoever, I thought would fill the void. It took me a long time to figure out that I had to fill it myself and that it would take a long time.”

“And have you filled that void yet?” I asked. I told myself I was just being polite. I wasn’t asking for the seven-year-old boy who’d lost his parents to addiction, his sister at fourteen, and himself at thirty-five.

“Not really, no.” She shook her head, and her dark curls bounced almost as if inviting me to reach out and twine my fingers in them. “But maybe I will someday.”

“And what about your exes?” I asked. My curiosity was making me rude. I didn’t care. “Are you still friends?”

“No,” she said. “One of them is most definitely unhappy with me as I turned down his surprise second proposal—”

“Whoa, hold up.” I held up my hand. “Explain.”

“Ugh, I don’t want to,” she said. “I don’t come out well in this story.”

“And now you have to tell me,” I said. I was going to be as immovable as a boulder on this.

“Fine,” she said. “Annotated version only on the condition of no judgment and no laughing.”

“I’d never.” I put my hand over my heart.

“All right, so every year my ex and I celebrate our divorce by going to a fancy dinner, but this year signals got mixed and he thought we were in a place we were definitely not in, and he was about to propose . . .” She paused. A pained expression crossed over her face and I waited, literally on the edge of my chair, afraid to move in case it startled her into not sharing.

“Well, I caught on that he was about to propose, and I cut him off by saying I was moving here and then I downed my champagne.”

“And?” I prodded. Surely, that wasn’t it?

“And he’d put the ring in my glass and I choked on it,” she said. She gave me a look. “Please note if and when you ever propose to a woman, do not put the ring in her food or beverage. It took three whole days for the stupid ring to pass. The last contact I had with him was a terse text from him, informing me that the professionally cleaned ring had arrived at his place.”

I tried not to laugh. Hand to God, I tried. I failed. It came out my nose with a distinctive honk. I clapped my hand over my mouth to try to contain it, but how could I not laugh? Her chagrined expression was just too much. It had been so long since I’d had a good belly laugh that the sound I made into my hand was that of a barking dog, and what was worse, I couldn’t stop.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Let it out. You don’t want to strain yourself by trying to keep it in.”

The harder I tried to get it together, the worse the laughing fit became. Finally I just gave in. I laughed until I cried, actual tears. When I finally caught my breath and gave my abs a rest, I asked, “What about your other ex? No surprise second proposals there?”

“No, thank goodness. Soph calls him the ‘big disappointment,’ or the ‘BD’ for short, so that’s about all you need to know there.”

I chuckled. Her eyes sparkled at me, and I knew it had been her intention to make me laugh. As I took in her big brown eyes and delicate features, I actually felt sorry for her ex-husbands. “It seems to me, any man stupid enough to lose you is going to spend the rest of his life learning exactly what disappointment is.”

A faint blush swept across her cheeks, and again I was one hundred percent beguiled. If I were a different man in a different circumstance, I would make it my mission to cause this woman to blush at every possible opportunity, preferably with no clothes on. I gave myself a mental shake. There really wasn’t much point in going there. I tried not to feel bitter about it and mostly succeeded.

“So this woman,” she said. “If she’s not an ex, then who is she?”

I thought about telling her, and for one brief moment, the idea of unburdening myself to her, telling her about me and Lexi and our parents and all of it, was so tempting, I felt my mouth open with the words right there. Instead, I said, “She’s someone I knew very well a long time ago, but we drifted apart over the years. She’s back in town now and I . . .”

“And you want to help her out but maintain some distance.” She finished my sentence for me when I paused for a beat too long.

“Exactly.” My gaze met and held hers. Much to my relief, there was no pity in her expression, no judgment, just acceptance. No wonder her first ex had wanted her back. Annabelle Martin was a rare and exotic bird.

“And what will I be designing?” she asked.

“Lexi Brewer is breaking ground on a net-zero housing development in the middle of Phoenix, and she will want you to design every bit of the identity, logo, advertising, etc., attached to it. The media is going to go bananas over this project, which I am quite certain is going to garner national attention.”

Her eyes went wide. “That’s huge.”

“As I said.”

One corner of her mouth turned up. “This would make me look really, really good.”

“And I’m sure you’ll do the same at the gala for me.” I held out my hand. “Deal?”

She studied me for a second as if she was looking for the fine print, the hidden warnings, the buried clauses. Then she reached across the space between our chairs and took my hand in hers. So impulsive! The skin-to-skin contact sent a thrum of awareness through me. It occurred to me in that moment that Annabelle Martin was much more dangerous than I’d realized.

“Deal,” she said.

---

“Are you sure?” Jackson stared at me as if I’d announced I was planning to skydive without a parachute.

“Yes,” I said. It had taken me two days to get the nerve up to do this thing, and my anxiety was making my impatience razor thin and just as cutting.

“Okay, I don’t want to discourage you in any way, but you haven’t left the house, other than to go to the doctor, in over nine months,” he persisted. As if I wasn’t painfully aware of this fact myself.

“Yeah, well, Lexi isn’t taking my calls, so I have no choice,” I said. “I’m going.”

“To her office on the jobsite,” he clarified.

“Did I stutter?” I asked.

Jackson shook his head. Good thing the man had a hide like a rhinoceros and was virtually impossible to insult. “Okay, I’ll bring the car around front.”

“Thanks,” I said. I made it short, because, in truth, I was trying not to freak out, and even thinking about being out there in the world where anything could happen—okay, a stroke, a massive you’re-now-a-potato stroke, could happen and I might not be able to get the care I needed in time—made me feel levels of discomfort found only at a proctologist’s office.

Jackson strode down the hallway, leaving me to ponder possible death or worse in his wake. Always a good time.

Lupita arrived with a water bottle and that indefinable air that everything was going to be okay. In the days following my stroke, she’d been there in the hospital advocating for the best care for me. She’d never left my side, and I’d never forgotten how reassuring it was to wake up and find her there, day or night. I didn’t know when I’d hired her and Juan that she would come to mean so much to me, but she had. Lupita was the only person on earth who could mother me and I accepted it. I knew her concern was genuine, so I believed her when she reassured me that all would be well.

“You’re doing the right thing, Nick,” she said. She straightened the collar of my shirt and smoothed the fabric on my shoulders. “Family is the most important thing, and your sister needs you.”

I glanced down at her and nodded. She was right, I knew that. It was why I was going on this fool’s errand for a sister who suddenly wouldn’t take my calls. Stubborn brat. Sure, I hadn’t acknowledged any of her overtures, and it had likely hurt her feelings. Okay, I’d been a total jerk and I was sure she was paying me back, so mature, but she could have saved us both a lot of trouble if she’d answered any of my calls over the past couple of days.

Lupita stood beside me as I leaned against the wall, trying not to obsess about every little twinge in my leg. I am not going to collapse, I kept repeating in my head like a mantra. I began to sweat and my heart was racing. Somehow I had to get through this meeting without Lexi catching on to my true condition. Sure, it was a pride thing, and too much pride was bad, but when I’d been scrambling to survive on my own in the city, not even a legal adult yet, my pride had been the one thing that kept me going.

Jackson pulled up and I nodded at Lupita, hoping the next time I saw her, I was still walking under my own power. I climbed into the passenger’s seat, stored my water in the cup holder, and buckled up. I had left my house a million times to go to the doctor. Surely this would not be that different, or so I tried to tell my racing heart.

“So why the sudden change of heart about your sister?” Jackson asked.

I sighed. “Are we going to talk the entire drive?”

“Yes,” he said. “Come on, it’ll keep your mind off of things.”

I appreciated that he said “things” instead of the more accurate “being an anxiety-ridden basket case.”

Why had I changed my mind? It was simple really. Neither of the two women currently crowding my life was going to go away. Annabelle would be living in the guest house for five more months, and all the rules in the world were not going to push her out. And Lexi, sure, she was pissed at me now, but I knew my sister. Once she got over giving me the cold shoulder, she’d double back trying to convince me to help her get local support for her project. The perfect solution was, of course, to have the two women work together.

It was genius, really. Annabelle would have her super huge client, and Lexi would have Annabelle, a hell of a lot better-looking representative for Daire Industries than I’d ever been. A little coaching and Annabelle would be able to handle the gala and anything else Lexi and the construction world threw at her.

“I don’t need to keep my mind off of things,” I said. “I have everything under control. I merely need to get some things in play, namely get Lexi and Annabelle working together on this huge project, which will get both of them out of my hair, and then I can step back into my blissfully reclusive existence and be left alone.”

“Couple of problems with that theory, brother,” Jackson said. I had repeatedly told him not to call me that. It indicated a closeness that we did not share. He continued to ignore the request, however.

“Name one,” I scoffed. It was a perfectly well-thought-out solution. I dared him to find a problem with it.

“Annabelle lives on the estate,” he said. “How can you possibly avoid her? Never mind, why would you want to?”

“She’s about to get very, very busy,” I said. “Next.”

He looked at me from under his bushy eyebrows and scratched his chin. “What about your sister? The woman sent you a singing hippo. Do you really think she’s just going to crawl off because you’ve got a stand-in helping with the gala?”

“Lexi hasn’t been my sister in the real sense in almost twenty years,” I said. “Don’t you find it the least bit telling that she didn’t look me up until she needed my money?”

“It’s not your money that she needs,” he said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “She needs my contacts, which are worth more than gold.”

“You really think she only came to you for your connections? She’s in town for this job; of course she took the opportunity to look you up,” Jackson said. His tone made it crystal clear that he thought I was an idiot.

“Yeah, it’s all very convenient.” I refused to accept any other explanation for her sudden appearance. It was easier this way.

Jackson sighed but I continued speaking to stave off another lecture about my brotherly duty to my sister.

“Listen, this is a win-win. Everyone gets what they want, it will help both women, and give me some peace and quiet,” I said. “I just need to get everyone on board.”

Lexi was the unknown quantity in the equation, but I was positive I could get her to see things my way. I was going to bankroll my sister’s gala on the condition that she hire Annabelle to design her corporate identity for the development and anything that included, such as advertisements, brochures, a website, you name it. The idea had come to me while talking to Annabelle in the yard. Now I just needed to get it in motion.

“Oh, speaking of the ladies, we’re picking up Annabelle at her office,” I said.

Jackson’s head whipped in my direction.

“Relax, she knows,” I said. He didn’t look reassured but it did shut him up, which I took as a victory.

Annabelle was waiting by the curb when we pulled up. She was wearing a tailored blue suit and matching heels. Her long curly hair had been restrained into a smooth knot at the nape of her neck. She looked all buttoned up and not in a sexy librarian way but more like trying to be someone she wasn’t. I didn’t like it. Not that it was for me to judge. It just didn’t suit her personality.

The Annabelle I had come to know was bright colors, flowing fabrics, and unrestrained curls. She was hot tubs on starry nights, singing at the top of her lungs just because she felt like it, and giving sanctuary to strays that had no place to go. That Annabelle made me think about things I shouldn’t, like burying my fingers in her hair and holding her still while kissing her senseless. Of having her body pressed up against mine while I—

“You okay over there?”

Jackson interrupted my erotic thought stream and I blinked. Yeah, it was clear. I needed to keep my tenant as far away from me as possible if I didn’t want things to get complicated, which I didn’t.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I was not fine.

Jackson parked and hopped out of the car. He greeted Annabelle and then opened the passenger door behind the driver’s door for her. A part of me was irritated that I hadn’t beaten him to it, but I knew I was on borrowed time with my body so I sat, feeling useless and lame. Always a solid kidney punch to the old self-esteem.

“Hi, Nick,” Annabelle said.

I turned in my seat to glance at her over my shoulder and noticed that a single curl had escaped her hairdo like a loose spring. It made me smile. Annabelle was still in there, behind the pressed linen and product-tamed hair. The curl spiraled just over her ear by her temple. The urge to twist it around my finger was almost more than I could stand.

“Good morning,” I said. “How was the new pretzel packaging received?”

“They loved it,” she said. Her grin was contagious.

I held up my hand and she high-fived it with enthusiasm. I smiled and asked, “You brought what we discussed?”

She patted the laptop bag beside her. “Of course.”

“Excellent,” I said. I don’t think I imagined the faint blush that filled her cheeks.

“Everyone ready?” Jackson asked, climbing back into the driver’s seat. Annabelle and I both nodded. “Then we’re off.”

Jackson steered us out into traffic, and we headed west until we reached Central Avenue and then he turned left and we were headed south. The city no longer resembled the rough-and-tumble place where I had grown up. Downtown, which used to be a wasteland inhabited by the down-and-out, was now a thriving art and food scene. The nearby university had revitalized the several city blocks by building a large portion of its campus in the center of the city. I knew all of this because I had built many of the new apartment complexes that now filled the district.

I used to feel a heady surge of pride every time I drove through the area, as if I’d left my thumbprint on every beam and brick, but now all I felt was futility. What had been the point of it all? Money? Power? None of that mattered when your body shit the bed.

Had I made anyone’s life better by banging up these overpriced monstrosities, or were the residents now bogged down by paying for a home they couldn’t really afford? Meanwhile, the stress of the years I’d worked like a demon had given me an old man’s case of hypertension and likely caused my stroke and would probably bring on another. I knew, in that moment, that I’d give away every last dime I had if I never had to sleep another night with that black cloud of worry hovering above me.

A chain-link fence cordoned off the construction site, but a section had been left open. Convenient. Since I hadn’t been able to reach my sister, to say this was a surprise visit was an understatement. We’d be lucky if she didn’t greet us all with a nail gun strapped to her hip and the attitude to match. If I remembered right from when she was a kid, she could hold a grudge.

I glanced at Annabelle to see what she was making of the situation. She looked as if she was concentrating on taking it all in.

Jackson parked right in front of the stairs that led up into the trailer, which was the temporary office of the builder and where I knew my sister maintained a work space so she could oversee her project. The smell of the place, plowed-up dirt, damp from the water being sprayed to keep the dust down, and the underlying smell of gasoline fumes and exhaust from the construction trucks filled my nostrils, and just like that I was back on my first jobsite. It was intoxicating stuff.

I opened my door and stood. My leg felt solid, no numbness as yet, and I was grateful. My mission was to get in and out as quickly as possible with Lexi none the wiser to my condition.

As I’d explained to Annabelle the night I made my proposal, under no circumstances did I want our client to know about what had happened to me. She’d looked like she was going to argue, but I’d wrapped up her compliance by reminding her that she needed this account.

I started up the steps using the handrail. Annabelle and Jackson fell in behind me. I could feel Annabelle’s stare on my back. I wondered what she was making of my ability to navigate the steps. The two times we’d seen each other, I’d been seated. How could I explain that post-stroke my life was a constant loop of being fine and then landing flat on my face for no diagnosable reason? I couldn’t. And I didn’t want to try as the very last thing I wanted from her was pity.

When I reached the landing, I rapped on the metal door. I heard the sound of a chair scraping back on a hard floor and the door was pulled open. Standing in the doorway was Lexi, and unsurprisingly, she did not look happy to see me.

“What the hell do you want?” she snapped. “Are you here to say ‘I told you so’? Because if you are, you can shove it right up your behind, I have nothing to say to you, big bro—”